Saturday, September 14, 2013

Blood Bowl - Beast of Nurgle

Although I rarely get to play it, it’s a game that I
constantly return to whenever I get the urge to convert or paint something new
and different simply for the joy of it.

Blood Bowl is one of those “love it, or leave it” kind of
games, with very little middle ground in-between. Part skirmish game, part
board game; it’s a tough sell to new players for a number of reasons—an
overwhelmingly rabid fanatical fan base, a steep learning curve on strategies
and mechanics that are highly situational, and the lack of support by the
game’s parent company…there’s a lot going against the game. If it wasn’t for
the support of the fans, players, and third party manufacturers, Blood Bowl
probably would have died off years ago.

It also doesn’t help the casual newcomer that the game is so
strongly tied to the painting and modeling hobby. Converting your team is by no
means absolutely necessary, but in most settings painting is either strongly
encouraged (leagues) or required (tournaments), and a majority portion of Blood
Bowl players are accomplished hobbyists, who take great pride in creating
custom teams with custom themes.

I’ve personally never been much of one to heavily theme my
own teams, but painting and converting my figures are at the top of my list
when it comes to Blood Bowl. In fact, I won’t field a team unless it’s complete
and painted.

The last game I played had the dual distinction of also
being the least enjoyable—not because I played poorly (I didn’t), or because
the dice didn’t go my way (pretty average rolling), but because my opponent
brought an unpainted, unprimed, bare metal team to the field, made up of
figures whose sculpts I was unfamiliar with, and thus couldn’t tell which
positionals were which (I suspect he had trouble with that determination
himself, since, when I had to constantly ask, “Which player in this dog pile
has guard?”, the piece in question seemed to move around a lot, even though our
teams were in a standstill on the pitch).

The fact that this was league play, and he had played the
team enough to skill a number of his players up meant that he should have had
enough time to paint his team—and in Blood Bowl especially, even two colors on
a figure is just basic respect for your fellow coaches.

So, I always paint my teams before I field them. Simple as
that.

My latest Blood Bowl obsession has been to create a Nurgle
team. I can’t explain why, but I’ve always had an obsession with Nurgle going
back to my early days of WFB, Rogue Trader, and Realm of Chaos. Don’t know
why—I’ve just always thought Nurgle was cool.

Nurgle teams are probably one of the hardest teams to get
good miniatures for. GW makes a team, but they aren’t the best figures (in my
opinion). Taking into account that you have four character types on the team to
deal with (Beast, Nurgle Warrior, Pestigor, and Rotters), and the fact that
they all have the potential to be rotten, diseased, and heavily mutated,
there’s a lot of variability in how to present them, and what miniatures to
get—most coaches will go to other miniature ranges and do heavy conversions to
create their teams.

I have a general plan to kitbash the majority of my own team,
but I thought I’d jump into the extreme deep end of the project, and scratch-build
my own unique Beast of Nurgle.

I’m posting him here, but I’ve actually had the Beast done
for a while.

It was a very long on-again-off-again process of sculpting
him from a Sculpey core, covered and detailed in greenstuff. The fungal growths
on his back are plastic tubing with the edges burnt so they melted and curled
back onto themselves.

The Beast is a big fella, and would take up too much room on
the pitch if I had to place him on his side, so for the Prone and Stunned conditions
I made a “P” and an “S” icon that can be inserted into one of the barnacles on
his shoulder-hump. Likewise, the Really Stupid condition has a “?” icon that
can be put on him to show his status.

The Beast was my first serious attempt at sculpting a figure
from scratch, and I’m pretty happy with him overall. There might be a few
things I would change if I were to do it again, but I’m ready to move on to the
rest of the team.